Episode 12- The Fire And The Furious: Tokyo Drift

There’s hot gossip flying off the shelves this week!! We’re talking, of course, about Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s account of the Trump White House’s chaotic interior. We’ll read and react to some of the weirdest, cattiest, and downright craziest things in the book, including mind-bending quotations from Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and all those with the name Trump. We’ll also talk about who Michael Wolff is, whether we can trust him, or whether that even matters!
Meanwhile, ex-president and newly minted water sports aficionado Barack Obama blessed us with his best of 2017 list. We’ll see what tracks Obama claimed to like this year and debate whether or not he actually listened to them or simply pulled an NSA and spied on his daughters’ Spotify lists.
We’re going to be talking about the protests that began in Iran before the New Year. We’ll give you the lowdown on what we know so far, and then we will pivot and relentlessly rip on the right wing’s false sympathy and bloodthirsty interest in regime change.
In the pop culture corner, we are going to go head to head in one of our first ever on-air disagreements. We’re talking about Dave Chappelle’s comeback and the role of criticism and woke politics in the decidedly not-woke field of stand-up comedy.
This week’s storytime is a touching tale of generosity and civility on the New York subway. OK, obviously that is not true. Dan is going to tell you about a fierce confrontation he had with a fellow Subway rider, just another atomized soul under late capitalism, and there will be a “baby hand” involved.

Linkz:
In obvious news, Trump is breaking down
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/us/politics/trump-genius-mental-health.html

Trump gave Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff full access, no one ever told him to leave, and Trump has now disavowed the book

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-book-donald-trump.html

Is Michael Wolff credible?
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/04/michael-wolff-fire-fury-credibility-325399

Matt Taibbi on Michael Wolff
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-why-michael-wolffs-book-is-good-news-w515045

Taxi union shuts down JFK, apparently all according to Bannon’s plan
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/316705-new-york-taxi-workers-refuse-to-pick-up-customers-from-jfk-for

Dana Gresham’s appointment as Doug Jones’ chief of staff
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/01/02/alabamas-sen-elect-doug-jones-picks-african-american-chief-of-staff/?utm_term=.69c6db522ff7

MySpace 8th-grader Barack Obama’s best tracks of 2017
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/2/16840986/barack-obama-best-2017-list-books-music-gentleman-in-moscow

Early reports on the Iran protests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/iran-protests-how-did-they-start-and-where-are-they-heading

Short description of the history of the left in Iran since 1950s
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/iran-left-tudeh-khomeini-nationalization-orientalism-oil-imperialism

Fox News Opinion explicitly advocating for the dismantling of the Iranian state
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/02/iran-protests-here-is-what-us-should-do-now.html

Trump tweets in support of Iran’s protests, even though Iran is on the travel ban:
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/02/politics/donald-trump-iran-tweet/index.html

Racist imp Ben Shapiro on how the Iran protests owned the libs
https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/iran-protests-trump-foreign-policy/

Myles Johnson’s take on Dave Chappelle’s comeback https://zine.philaprint.com/2017/04/01/dave-chappelle-and-performing-ignorance/

THE CASE AGAINST LIBERAL HUMOR
https://www.splicetoday.com/pop-culture/the-case-against-liberal-uncle-humor

Trump as bad comedic material
http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/donald-trump-jokes-bad-comedy.html

J20 legal defense fund
http://defendj20resistance.org/2017/10/27/donate-j20-legal-fund.html

---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hog-planet/message